No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Gentlemen,

Welcome to Wabash College. Over the next four years, but especially during your first fleeting days at this wonderful place, you will meet many new people. Familiarity with or memory of all these many names and faces will be impossible. As you embark upon this sea of new people and promising prospects, another experience will confront you like the Cyclops did Odysseus.

Not only will you meet new people, but you will often be asked to give your opinion of these new acquaintances. This situation occurs all the time in our lives. During a conversation, a friend might ask if you know Joe Smith. You do know Joe Smith but only from your History 101 course. You have maybe spoken with him twice. Yet, you still feel compelled to deliver an opinion. As you do not actually know him well, the usual response is, “He is nice.”

The purpose of this article is to discuss what it means to be nice, the way we use the word, and whether using it is healthy.

So let us begin. Ask yourself honestly what it means to be nice. What are we saying about someone when we call him nice? Does that evaluation of a person’s character describe well who he really is?

It seems to me that being nice means meeting a certain level of social etiquette usually involving minding one’s own business and being courteous. As long as Joe Smith is not obnoxious in class and is willing to loan you a pencil on the day of the test, he is a nice guy. Nice people say please and thank you, return a smile, and comment on the weather.

So, then, the word “nice” describes people terribly. It tells us nothing about their beliefs, habits, vices, or personality apart from an ability to maintain a level of composure in public. The way we use “nice” reveals how superficial it is.

First, think about how well acquainted with someone we must be in order to call them nice. We might, for example, refer to the cashier at a coffee shop as nice after talking to them for only a matter of seconds. If this level of intimacy is all that is needed to characterize someone as nice, I doubt that anyone would be willing to allow someone to babysit his children just because he is nice.

Furthermore, consider the situation in which you can come to realize someone is nice. Usually these encounters, as in the case of a coffee shop or History 101, take place in public. This fact makes sense, because being nice is a social virtue. Our society demands niceness and ostracizes those who refuse to submit to its yoke. Think of the social pressure exerted on that cashier or Joe Smith. Not being nice can literally mean the loss of a job or friendships. Thus, the motivations to be nice can be entirely superficial.

One of the great dangers of niceness is its malicious use. Being nice, as we have seen, is no deeper than a façade, and as such it can be used as a façade. We all know people, or might be one of those ourselves, that are entirely two-faced. These individuals are little angels around people, whose opinions matter (read: they are nice), but become entirely different when no one is looking.

Flannery O’Connor’s short story Good Country Folk demonstrates this phenomenon perfectly. Mrs. Hopewell, who lives in the country with her daughter, Joy, an arrogant academic with an artificial leg, is called on one day by a Bible salesman named Manley Pointer. They talk for awhile, and she eventually invites him to dinner. The next day, Mrs. Hopewell says of him, “Lord, he bored me to death but he was so sincere and genuine I couldn’t be rude to him. He was just good country people, you know, just the salt of the earth.” Only hours after this statement, that same bible salesman seduces Joy. They go on a walk together in the woods, and Pointer convinces her to take off her fake leg. While they are lying together, he produces whiskey, a pornographic deck of cards, and some sort of contraception from the inside of a hollowed-out bible. At this point, Joy realizes what has happened and yells out, “Aren’t you, aren’t you just good country people?” And he responds, “Yeah, but it ain’t held me back none.” He then steals her leg, runs off, and leaves Joy stranded. As he emerges from the woods, Mrs. Hopewell sees him and again says, “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried to sell me a Bible yesterday… He was so simple, but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.”

In O’Connor’s story “Good Country” could easily be replaced with “nice”. Pointer had met certain social criteria which made him good country people. Mrs. Hopewell then places confidence in his good-country appearnce, even though he turns out to be a sexual predator.

Being nice is not difficult and really says nothing about a person. Why then has this seemingly useless trait continued to be important in our discourse? I would suggest first that it demonstrates how lazy we can be in our concern for each other.  Maintaining a friendship at the nice level with Joe Smith is hardly challenging. To really get to know him, however, would demand making ourselves vulnerable by revealing who we really are beyond the façade of nicety. Concurrently, we must demand something of Joe Smith; we challenge him to enter that risky arena of thoughts, personalities, and dreams. In a sense, we would really have to get to know him. I admit that this is not an easy task, but ultimately our only rewarding relationships come from such arduous and awkward work.

I also think that niceness fulfills a certain necessary role in society. As I described earlier with regard to beginning college, we meet a lot of people unknown to us. Furthermore, life forces us to interact with many of these people, as when we get a coffee or ask to borrow a pencil. Social convention is needed then to maintain a healthy level of interaction during these short encounters. If everyone was a jerk, it would be difficult to progress through the day without constantly descending into unneeded quarreling. Think New York.

Thus, we value niceness so that the society can work fluidly. Ancient Rome was an entirely public culture, a shame culture. A man’s value correlated with his public persona. Thus, the Roman philosopher Quintilian declares rhetorical skill to be the mark of a good man. In our own society, we know that this does not ring true. We, at times, demand more of our politicians than eloquent words; their actions, personal and public, demonstrate their character.

Yet Quintilian at least identified the need for the maintenance of a superficial social order. It is impossible to get to know everyone we meet deeply, but we still need to act in a mutually beneficial way, which is being nice. Furthermore, niceness is an able platform, upon which to build a true friendship. It creates an opportunity for people to begin those true conversations that are necessary for friendship.

So this article is not meant to drive everyone on this campus to ignore each other and shirk niceness. Continue to be nice. Call someone nice if you must, but also be willing to admit that you cannot comment about someone because you do not really know them. So often we tell each other not to judge the bad in others too hastily. Why should we judge the good just as quickly?

Regardless, realize how little you are saying about a nice person and the façade you yourself have presented by being nice. It is alright to be nice and appreciate niceness in others, but do not fool yourself that it demonstrates intimacy or even familiarity. The most important advice I can give is to transcend niceness. Be willing to reveal who you truly are and what you really believe, so that we can all begin to form the deep and lasting relationships that Wabash College so often produces.